She smiles and she laughs and she forgets herself for a moment. Sereia sinks into love, into family, into the comfort of being known. She guards against herself, but she does not have to hide. Not here, not before Andi. There is comfort in knowing that she is so utterly known and she does not have to hide if she so chose.
The golden kelpie gives herself over to the laughter and the joy of talking about the beauty of the mainland. Her heart stutters and skips like a newborn lamb over every memory she has of the Night Markets and Solterra.
"I saw Solterra in my dreams," The girl sighs wistfully, drunk upon a mystery that has lain unsolved in her mind. "When I went it was just as I had dreamed. Isn't that strange?" Her smile grows, it dares to reach into the lengthened corners of her lips before thw can stop it. Then, she thinks of the pygmy dragons her sister mentions, “I have seen them too!” Sereia laughs, “they are so small and so cute, their fires more like little matches.” She remembers one that hiccuped and singed the ends of her hair - she was only fortunate that her hair was still damp from the sea, or else she might be little more than ash on the wind now. “They are a little dangerous though,” Sereia adds lightly, her grin turning playful, ironic given they are the dangerous ones here.
And then a thought, it strikes so fast, so suddenly that they are spilling from her tongue before her mind can even censor it, “I wonder what a dragon would taste like.” In her bones, tangled within the chains of her sinew, her kelpie is laughing as instinct and desire spill unchecked past her lips.
Regretfully Sereia quiets. She cannot clutch back the words. She cannot wrestle them back into her mouth, no matter how much she wishes to. Her smile evaporates like rainwater. Her smile does not return. How can it when Anandi’s laughter turns from with her, to against her. The younger sister tips her chin up, defiant, guarding her morals. “They taste quite sweet and keep me alive.” Barely. She feels all her angles and her ribs like black keys upon a piano.
After a moment Anandi nudges the corpse away and Sereia watches it roll, limp and lifeless, spilled open. Bone and blood and raw flesh turn the air sweet and metallic. It smells wonderful. She looks away and bleats, “But it had a life too. It is not inanimate. It had friends and family and maybe children. It is no better than eating a horse.” Her gaze finds the verdant green of her sister’s eyes, “A life is a life no matter what.”
And it feels no different to take the life of an animal or the life of a horse. Sereia would know.
@
an unspoken soliloquy of dreams
~ Ariana
